Читать книгу The Millionaires' Cinderellas: Playing the Greek's Game / The Forbidden Innocent / Too Proud to be Bought - Шэрон Кендрик, Sharon Kendrick - Страница 16

‘TECHNICALLY,’ said Emma, ‘I suppose I was.’

‘What the hell are you talking about—technically?’ Zak demanded as he stared at her flushed face. ‘Either you’re a virgin, or you’re not.’

Trying not to recoil from the accusation blazing from his eyes, Emma felt her pleasure evaporate. Their love-making had been so incredible—like she’d never dared dream it could be. She wanted to just lie there and relive it—second by glorious second—only now Zak was about to ruin it with some intrusive Q and A session. Uncomfortably, she wriggled. ‘Do we have to talk about this now?’

‘Damned right we do!’ he exploded, because he felt as if she’d somehow tricked him. Again! As if she had revealed one secret when she’d told him the truth about Nat—only for him to discover that there was another one lurking, just below the surface. How many secrets did this woman have? he wondered furiously. ‘When would you like us to discuss it? When you’re hanging drapes with Cindy listening on the sidelines?’

‘Of course not!’

‘So start talking!’

‘What is there to say?’ she questioned tiredly. ‘Except that my marriage was never properly consummated.’

‘But Louis Patterson was known as a sex god!’

‘He was also a heavy user of drugs and alcohol!’ She met his eyes, the hurt and the pain spiralling up inside her and threatening to spill out in angry tears. But she swallowed them down, damned if she would come over as any more vulnerable than she already did. ‘Can’t you work it out for yourself, Zak—or do I have to spell it out for you?’

There was silence for a moment. ‘He was impotent?’

Emma nodded, her throat thick with emotion—because even though at the time she’d pored over medical books, which had told her that such a side effect was normal for addicts, that hadn’t stopped her from feeling a failure, had it? As if it was somehow all her fault. If she’d been stronger, she’d have been able to get him clean and sober. If she’d been more attractive, he would have been able to consummate their brief marriage. And Louis had only compounded those feelings of guilt—telling her that he’d never had problems with any woman before her.

‘Yes,’ she answered bluntly. ‘He was.’

For a moment Zak didn’t say anything, just shook his head. He felt like a man who’d just opened his early-morning shutters and seen the night-time sky outside. ‘I just can’t believe it,’ he said.

‘Is it such a crime to be a virgin then, Zak?’

‘That’s a naïve question and you know it.’ He stared at her golden fingernails, which gleamed against the pristine white of the duvet. What a mass of contradictions she was, with her tumble of pale hair and her siren’s body—yet beneath all that she’d been concealing an innocence which had shocked him profoundly.

‘It wasn’t an assumption I would ever have made about you,’ he continued. ‘And part of you must have realised that. But either you didn’t think to tell me, or you decided deliberately not to tell me. And I would have liked to have known, Emma—to have been given some kind of choice in the matter about whether I wanted to take your virginity. Why me? And why now?’

Any trace of post-orgasmic euphoria had now completely vanished and Emma shivered, reaching for the rumpled duvet and pulling it around her. Maybe she had been wrong not to tell him—but hadn’t one of the reasons been fear that he would have walked away? That some misplaced sense of ‘honour’ would have stopped him from making love to her? And hadn’t she felt as if she’d die if he didn’t?

‘Why you? I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that. You’re a very attractive and charismatic man, Zak, and I couldn’t stop myself, if you must know,’ she said in a low voice. ‘How’s that for honesty?’

He mulled this over in silence for a moment. ‘And there’s never been anyone else?’

She could hear the incredulity in his voice. ‘Never.’ Because hadn’t her experience with Louis reinforced all her jaded views about men—views which had been formed by watching her mother operate? Louis had left her feeling inadequate and a failure and yet, in a way, it had been a relief to believe that she was frigid. To reassure herself that men were nothing but trouble and that she no longer had to venture down that particular road. Shunning the opposite sex hadn’t been a problem at all—at least, not until the day she’d walked into Zak’s office. And from that moment on, her feelings had given her nothing but trouble. ‘I thought there might be something wrong with me. That maybe I was frigid.’

‘Only now you’ve discovered that you most definitely aren’t?’ He gave a short laugh. ‘I must say this is the first time in my life I’ve ever felt like a stud. Like I’ve been used to prove a point—and I’m not sure I like it very much.’

Emma realised that he’d added yet another accusation to the fast-growing list of complaints against her. And yet, why was he acting so hard done by? It wasn’t as if it had been some long and slow candlelit seduction, was it? It had been fast and furious, almost angry sex—and surely for a man like Zak that must be something of a relief. It wasn’t as though she was going to start reading too much into it—not when it had been motivated by anger and lust.

‘Okay, it was a big mistake and we should never have done it,’ she said, wriggling over to the side of the bed. ‘So I’ll get out of your hair and out of your bed and we can both try to forget it ever happened.’

The supple movement of her pale body made him harden. ‘I don’t want you to get out of my bed,’ he said savagely. ‘I don’t want you going anywhere!’

‘Don’t feel you have to sugar-coat your disgust to try to spare my feelings!’

He leaned across and caught hold of her, and as the duvet fell away to reveal the lush spill of her breasts he sucked in a deep breath. ‘I’m not sugar-coating anything,’ he said unevenly. ‘And I can assure you that disgust is the very last thing on my mind right now.’

Hating herself for her compliance but unable to resist him when he looked at her like that, she allowed him to pull her into his arms. ‘Really?’

‘Really. I’m just a little dazed by my discovery and hoping that …’ His words faded as he turned his lips and began to kiss the soft skin of her upper arm.

Fighting to prevent her eyelids from fluttering to a close, Emma stared at the tangled black gleam of his hair. ‘Hoping that wh-what?’

He heard the waver of uncertainty in her voice and suddenly he felt anger for all she had endured. A mother who had been an appalling role model and who, it seemed, had pushed her into an unsuitable marriage when she was still heartbreakingly young. And then some thoughtless junkie of a husband who’d made her believe she was frigid. His voice softened. He didn’t have to add to that list by being such a brute, did he? ‘That you enjoyed what just happened, after what has been a very long wait.’

Now Emma was wide awake. Was that sympathy she heard in his voice—or was it the dreaded pity, which she’d always gone out of her way to avoid? Maybe he looked on her as some kind of freak because she happened to have reached the age of twenty-nine before losing her virginity. She looked at him suspiciously. ‘Are you asking me to mark you out of ten?’

‘No.’ He laughed as he pulled her right back against him. ‘I’ve never felt it necessary to request a scorecard.’

Probably because he’d get a gold star after every performance, she thought. She tried to hold on to what she felt was righteous indignation, but it wasn’t easy. Not when he had drifted his lips to the curve of her jaw, an area she wouldn’t have ever dreamt could be erogenous. But how wrong could she be? Because when Zak gave that tiny, barely there flick of his tongue, she was unable to stop the helpless tremble of her body. And suddenly she couldn’t stop herself from wrapping her arms tightly around his neck and putting her face very close to his.

‘Zak.’

‘Shh.’ He lifted his head so that his lips were soft against hers and he teased them open with his tongue. Shouldn’t he delight her again—to reinforce that she was a deliciously healthy and normal young woman? Couldn’t he give her the gift of physical enlightenment, even if he wasn’t emotionally equipped to offer her any more than that? ‘The second time can be even better.’

‘B-better?’

‘Mmm. Slower. More …’

‘Zak!’

‘Mmm?’

‘What … what are you doing?’

He raised his head from its current location just south of her belly, his eyes gleaming in a way which made Emma’s heart give a powerful kick. ‘I’m about to lick you where every woman likes best to be licked and which might make conversation a little difficult. So you’ll forgive me if I don’t answer any more of your questions for a while.’

She wanted to protest that mentioning what other women liked wasn’t the most diplomatic thing to say in the circumstances. She opened her mouth to tell him so but by then his dark head was buried between her thighs and his tongue was darting into her … Oh, God! He was actually kissing her … there—and the only sound she made was a gasp of disbelief that something could feel this good.

Softly, she moaned as his mouth worked some kind of sensual magic—her inhibitions melting away as she squirmed beneath the precision of his questing tongue. For a moment, she couldn’t believe that this was really her—uptight Emma Geary writhing as her boss kissed her in the most intimate place imaginable and made her feel as if he was feasting on her.

Her second climax surprised her almost as much as the first—but then, she hadn’t been expecting either. And she suddenly realised that sexual fulfilment didn’t have to be something which hovered frustratingly just out of range. That if you were with the right man, it could happen as easily as breathing.

‘Zak,’ she whispered, wondering if it would be the wrong thing to do to fling her arms around his neck and to thank him. But he still didn’t seem in the mood for any kind of conversation because he didn’t even wait for the sweet spasms to subside before moving over her and thrusting deep inside her again.

Acutely aware of her own inexperience, she wondered if he was enjoying this as much as she was. But then the rhythm of his body changed and she felt him shudder. Heard the muffled exclamation he made in Greek and revelled in the way he kissed the top of her head afterwards, his hand snaking possessively around her waist, and he gave a deep sigh of contentment.

Silently, she clung to him—not wanting to break the warm spell which made it ridiculously easy for her to start wondering what this might be like on a full-time basis. Would it always be this amazing? Zak had been tender and considerate as a lover, even though she’d known he was angry at her deception. Just imagine what it might be like if he was in a good mood!

‘Zak?’ she questioned softly, when she realised from the sound of his steady breathing that he was fast asleep.

Slowly, she turned her head to look at his soft, parted lips and the starkness of his ebony hair against the snowy pillow. How completely relaxed he looked. His big body was sprawled out, all gleaming olive skin and honed muscle as he took up most of the bed. She thought he was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen and she could have lain there looking at him for hours. But even as she was revelling in the visual feast, dark thoughts began to eat away at her precarious self-esteem.

What had he said? I’m about to lick you where every woman likes best to be licked. Emma bit her lip and turned her gaze up to the ceiling. He had made her sound as if she was just the latest in a long line of lovers—and maybe that had been his intention.

Because that was exactly what she was. In fact, she probably only qualified for one-night-stand status.

She forced herself to confront the facts, no matter how painful they might be. His proud, Greek nature was appalled by her background, he’d told her that himself—and that much hadn’t changed. Why, he’d even gone to the trouble of shipping her across the Atlantic so that he could separate her from his brother.

So what did she think was going to happen now that she’d had sex with him? That he’d take her to that very expensive jewellery shop situated on the eighth floor of his hotel and purchase one of those whopping great diamond rings which glittered so enticingly in the window? She winced. Not all men made ridiculously over-the-top gestures, the way Louis had done. And hadn’t she learned the hard way that those gestures were empty ones? Zak had been fired up by lust and anger and they were no basis for anything solid, or lasting.

She had to get real. To look at the possibilities which lay open to her and then decide what to do. She thought about spending the night here, all wrapped up in his warm body, and temptation whispered over her skin. And then she imagined Zak waking up and thought about what they’d actually say to each other.

The most likely outcome was that he would open his eyes and regret everything that had happened last night. And wouldn’t walking out of his suite wearing a crumpled evening dress in the harsh light of morning only add to her own feelings of remorse? Why, she didn’t even have a toothbrush, let alone a hairbrush! Imagine if she bumped into that nice woman who made her bed each morning—or ran into Cindy. Emma flinched. If it was to be a one-off, then surely at least she could emerge with her pride intact. There’d be no need for any awkward farewells if she absented herself first.

Silently, she pushed aside the duvet and held her breath as she slipped from the bed. But, mercifully, Zak didn’t stir and Emma quietly scooped up her underwear, shoes and dress and carried them into the sitting room. Her fingers were trembling as she dressed, terrified that he would wake up. And she couldn’t bear the thought of facing him—afraid that he would look into her eyes and be able to read her thoughts. To realise that the whole experience had left her with more than the discovery that she was as normal as any other woman. And just as vulnerable. She felt bruised and raw—as if the protective skin she had grown around her heart had been stripped away. Nagging away at her was the growing fear that she could really start to care for Zak Constantinides.

Just before she opened the door, she caught sight of herself in the vast mirror which hung over the marble fireplace, freezing with horror as she saw the image reflected back at her. Her blond hair looked like the ‘before’ photo in a shampoo ad and her dress was so crumpled it could have been mistaken for a high-class duster. But it was her face which shocked her the most—all dark, smudged eyes and kiss-bruised lips.

She looked wanton. As if she’d been designed with no other purpose in life than to provide a man with pleasure. Unable to hold back her revulsion, Emma shuddered.

Because that was how her mother had liked to look—the way she’d lured in all those sleazy men. Hadn’t Emma seen her looking like that when she’d been getting her own breakfast cereal before school? And hadn’t she vowed that she would never, ever get like that herself?

Her fingers were trembling as she picked up her discarded clutch bag and quietly let herself out of Zak’s suite.